What is Step Mail? Effective implementation points and 3 successful cases

Step mail is a communication method that e-mails prospective customers with useful information step by step in a lead nurturing scenario to increase their willingness to purchase.

Specifically, to prospective customers who have taken certain actions, such as requesting materials or registering for free membership, we will send emails prepared in advance in order to maintain the relationship after that.

Behind the importance of step mail in BtoB marketing is the change in customer purchasing behavior in BtoB business.

With the spread of the Internet, potential customers have taken the following steps to solve their problems. In other words, the flow is to collect information mainly on the Internet, find some solutions from it, make a comparative selection of products and services, and finally purchase.

Especially in B2B business, multiple people are involved in decision making until purchasing. Therefore, it is important to provide and nurture useful information for prospective customers in each consideration process.

In this potential customer’s behavior, the role of step mail is to regularly deliver information that meets the information needs of prospective customers, maintain contact between prospective customers and your company, and lead them to purchase.

Table of Contents

The action itself of ′′ delivering emails to customers and prospects ′′ in step mail is the same as the mail magazine.

However, their purposes, effects, and contents are different. The biggest difference is the timing of transmission .

E-mail magazines deliver products and services that companies want to introduce, such as release information such as new products, new arrival information such as events, and campaigns, at the timing of the company.

The main feature of these actions is that they are solely on the “company side” .

On the other hand, step mail refers to multiple emails that are triggered by the action of prospective customers, and the content that responds to it.

It is characterized by the fact that the user is the main subject, and the “information requested by the user” is sent at the timing when the prospective customer is most interested .

As introduced earlier, emails are sent after a customer purchases a product or when they take some action, and within a certain period of time, multiple emails are sent according to the set scenario.

In general, there are many cases where the schedule is set and delivered using the email delivery system CRM tool.

If you use step mail, you can gradually deepen your relationship with customers, and it will lead to the improvement of your willingness to buy. Below are two benefits of using step mail.

1.Increased prospective customers and increased willingness to purchase

Step by step until the prospect decides to purchase the product. Especially for B2B products, the purchasing process is long, so there is a high possibility that prospective customers will leave the purchasing process .

If you regularly deliver valuable information by step mail, you can gradually build a relationship with prospective customers and prepare a situation where you can make a smooth purchase at the purchase stage.

2. Appeal to customers

Customers tend to choose brands they are familiar with. However, in today’s world of information, it is difficult to get customers to remember your brand.

For example, even if you request materials from your website, customers will forget about your brand after a few days.

It is necessary to take measures to maintain relationships with prospective customers who have established touch points once, and step mail is effective as such measures. If you repeatedly deliver valuable information to prospective customers with step mail, the recall rate of the brand will improve, and when it comes to the product consideration stage, the probability that your product will be selected will increase.

There are two disadvantages that you should know before using step mail. Below are the pros and cons of each.

1. It takes time to compose an email

The important point in step mail is to understand the customer’s needs and provide the information the other party wants at the right time.

You can’t build customer relationships without creating the right messaging and attachments for each buying process. Therefore, it will take time and effort to compose the email.

2. Need to collect email addresses

Step mail is effective when you have many prospective customers’ email addresses.

If you do not have an e-mail address, you will need to take measures to collect e-mail addresses by attracting customers on your website.

However, it is difficult to connect customers to CVs in exchange for email addresses, and this will also take time and effort.

If you use step mail well, you can expect the following effects compared to conventional mail measures.

Easier to build trust

Step emails send multiple emails based on scenarios, so customers have more time to interact with emails. It is said that people tend to like those who come in contact with them more often, which psychologists call the “mere exposure effect”.

However, no matter how much you increase the number of contacts, the information sent at the timing when it is unnecessary for the customer is ultimately unnecessary and has the opposite effect.

In that respect, step mail sent at the right time according to the customer’s behavior contributes to improving the image of the customer’s company and promotes the building of relationships.

Makes it easier for customers to move through the steps leading up to purchase

Customers go through multiple steps before making a purchase. It is also a feature of step mail that you can properly catch the action and provide information according to the action.

By providing appropriate information at each step and guiding them to the next step, it is possible to reduce abandonment until purchase and lead to purchase behavior in a natural way.

Next, we will introduce the points you should keep in mind to send effective step emails.

Target clarification

The important thing in implementing step mail is to clarify who it is for.

Basically step mail doesn’t work unless prospective customers take some action. Therefore, clarifying the target is very important. What kind of emails should be sent to prospective customers who have taken action? For example, a target might be:

• who downloaded the material
• who attended the seminar
• Visitors to the event booth
• Sender from contact form
• Viewers of service content and price list pages

Depending on the actions taken by your prospects, you need to deliver content that meets their needs.

Clarification of purpose

In step mail, you need to make content after clearly deciding what purpose to achieve.

The point is to decide not only the purpose of the scenario as a whole, but also the purpose of each and every one of them.

for example,

• If you aim to improve the CV rate, deliver product information that prospective customers are interested in
• If you want to improve the open rate, provide useful know-how and templates for prospective customers.

Let’s set a goal so that the information that the customer wants matches the action that the company wants the customer to take .

Scenario design

Scenario design is extremely important in Step Mail .

As I mentioned at the beginning, the era of selling from the company side is over.

There is a need to shift to a customer-oriented style in which information is provided according to the purchasing process of prospective customers .

This makes it extremely important to give your prospects the content they need, when they need it.

When prospective customers consider a product or service, they go through the following process: problem discovery → collection of information to solve the problem → selection of candidate products that will serve as a solution → inquiry → comparison study → approval → purchase.

If you can provide information tailored to each step, you can give prospective customers the impression that the company gave them the information they wanted at the best time. For example, when selecting solution candidates, provide service strengths, points of difference from other companies, and case studies.

Scenario design is essential for deploying effective lead nurturing like this.

Please refer to the free guidebook below, which summarizes the procedures and examples of creating effective scenarios.

Effect measurement

After taking measures based on appropriate targeting and scenario design, it is necessary to measure their effectiveness. In addition to conventional measures, it is necessary to measure the effectiveness of step mail from the perspective of whether it was possible to appropriately reach the set target and whether it led to a customer experience according to the scenario.

While watching the customer’s reaction to each email and the reaction to the CTA, check the target and scenario as necessary.

KPIs for the effectiveness of step mails must be set according to the purpose and scenario of the step mails. Also, just as the purpose of the scenario as a whole and the purpose of individual emails were different, KPIs will also be set for each.

Here, we introduce examples that can be considered as KPIs for step mail. In addition to this, please consider KPIs that can correctly grasp the current situation according to each purpose.

Open rate

The open rate is very important in email marketing. No matter how good your email is, it won’t reach your customers unless it’s opened.

Emails that are discarded or left unopened are considered unnecessary information for customers. In other words, step mail with a low opening rate may even give the impression that it is a company that sends junk mail, rather than building a relationship of trust with customers.

If the open rate is low, review the subject line, sending time, and sender name.

click rate

It is also an important indicator to what extent the expected actions are taken among the users who saw the email. Emails with low click-through rates may be mismatched with your customers’ needs for some reason.

For example, the content is not attractive, the timing is not right for the customer, and the content and the CTA are inconsistent.

If the click rate is bad, deepen your customer understanding again, review and improve the message content and attached content.

unsubscribe rate

Your unsubscribe rate for emails is a true indicator of how your customers rate your content. Taking the trouble to open and unsubscribe rather than discarding the email indicates that the content of the email was completely unappealing to the customer.

If the unsubscribe rate is high, there are many cases where it is necessary to drastically review the content scenario or the entire step mail policy.

In order to effectively use step mail to build relationships with customers and lead nurturing, it is necessary to consider measures with the following points in mind.

Set email frequency correctly

Step emails send multiple emails depending on the customer’s behavior. If this frequency is low, the customer abandonment rate will increase, and if it is too high, there is a possibility that the customer will receive the email at an unnecessary time.

Even useful emails can be classified as informational “junk” if they arrive more frequently than desired. It is very important to keep your customers engaged and send emails at a frequency that is not excessive.

Set one purpose for one email

The most important point when creating content is to set only one purpose for one email.

Since you have limited opportunities to reach out to your customers, you’ll want to include as much information as possible when emailing. But it has the opposite effect.

Emails that contain multiple topics are difficult for the reader to determine what is really important, and there is even the risk that all the information will be overlooked. It is important to determine what approach is really necessary for each step of the customer, and to focus on one and deliver the most effective purpose.

Now, I will introduce specifically what kind of step email should be sent in what kind of case, based on the example that HubSpot is doing.

① Follow-up email from the person in charge after viewing the price page

(2) Follow-up email from the person in charge after viewing the introduction case study page

③ After signing up for the free software, explain how to use it and how to set it up.

We have introduced some examples, but the effective step mail scenario strongly depends on your company’s business model and service form.

A good first step is to take the approach of automating the emails your sales reps are sending to their prospects.

Below are three examples of companies that have achieved results by introducing step mail.

1. BellFace Co., Ltd.

BellFace Co., Ltd. is an IT company that develops and provides online sales systems. The company worked on various marketing measures with the aim of accelerating business growth by acquiring prospective customers.

Although the number of prospective customers has increased, only about 30% of the inquiries for document requests lead to actual business negotiations. Therefore, in order to unearth the 70% that did not lead to business negotiations, we decided to implement a step email.

Once a week, we sent an e-mail to solve the problems that prospective customers have along with examples. In addition to delivering step-by-step emails, we also understand customer concerns and optimize email content based on customer behavior data.

As a result, we were able to successfully lead to business negotiations without spending a lot of man-hours, partly because we set up an application form for re-negotiations in the second half of the email.

A major factor in our success was our ability to repeatedly improve our analysis and deliver the right value at the right time.

2. Peraichi Co., Ltd.

Peraichi Co., Ltd. operates and provides website creation services for smartphones.

The company’s services are free to use, but a paid plan is required to use certain features.

The company’s goal is to increase the number of paid plan subscribers, and to that end, it has implemented measures to improve the satisfaction of existing users and increase the number of new users based on reputation.

The company targeted users who had not created a homepage and users who had not re-logged in, and delivered step-by-step emails every seven days.

By analyzing customer behavior during implementation , we can successfully clarify the issues faced by customers. We achieved a 20% increase in the open rate and a 5% increase in the billing rate through email delivery suited to the task.

3. HubSpot

Our company, HubSpot, delivered a step-by-step email to potential customers who requested materials from our website.

What we value is to provide value that solves the problems our customers face.

Therefore, in the first step email, I decided to ask the customer about the challenges in the following selection format.

[Which of the following problems would you like to solve? ]

• Creation of new customers
• Increased revenue
• Manage your sales pipeline
• all of the above

If the other party selects an issue, a download page of free materials that will help you solve the issue will be displayed.

After that, we delivered step-by-step emails in line with the selected tasks , and achieved great records with an open rate of 65% and a CTR of 61%.

Below, we will introduce 5 representative step mail delivery tools.

1. Distribution mail

Distribution mail is an e-mail magazine / simultaneous mail distribution service that has been introduced to more than 8,000 companies.

It is an intermediate existence between email delivery and marketing automation, and can solve email marketing issues with easier operation than marketing automation.

With step mail delivery, you can automatically send emails that have been prepared in advance to business partners starting at a specific time. In addition, there are plenty of functions such as hot lead extraction and trigger emails.

Since there is generous support before and after the introduction, even companies that introduce a step mail delivery tool for the first time can operate it with confidence.

2. Will Mail

WiLL Mail is an editor that allows you to create HTML emails with drag-and-drop operations.

Since it can be used with intuitive operations, it leads to shortening the time and man-hours required for creating emails. It also features heatmap analysis to visually grasp the location of valid links and more.

It is recommended for companies that want to deliver step-by-step emails with a high level of design unique to HTML.

3. HubSpot

By introducing our HubSpot marketing automation, you can deliver valuable emails at the optimal timing simply by setting triggers and conditions from a wide variety of options.

No programming knowledge is required to create emails. It has a variety of functions such as a function that automatically personalizes the subject and content according to the recipient, A / B test, and a workflow that allows you to set clear goals.

You can consistently improve efficiency from creation of contents and scenarios to distribution, analysis and improvement in step mail.

Since this product is marketing software, it also supports automation of various tasks other than email.

4.Pardot _

Pardot is marketing automation specialized for B2B provided by Salesforce.

You can deliver step mail by flexible scenario design according to customer needs. By linking with Sales Cloud, you can centrally manage the customer information accumulated by the marketing and sales departments, increasing the effectiveness of your sales activities.

In addition to step mail delivery, it has functions such as tracking, scoring of prospective customers, and engagement analysis.

5. Marketo Engage

Marketo Engage is marketing automation that has been introduced by more than 5,000 companies worldwide.

With the step mail delivery function, you can set detailed scenarios, so you can deliver mail according to customer behavior and situations. You can also analyze the opening rate and click rate of emails, so you can check, analyze, and improve the performance indicators of step emails.

In addition to email marketing, it also features marketing automation and lead management to effectively engage with customers throughout the customer journey.

Here’s how to make it more effective with step mail.

deepen customer understanding

The key to step mail success is how to deepen customer understanding. By deepening customer understanding and grasping the issues faced by the other party, you can provide useful information in step mail. CRM is the best way to effectively understand your customers.

By introducing CRM, customer information can be centrally managed, and information can be shared smoothly with departments that have contact with customers, such as sales and customer support. Leverage customer information at every touchpoint to pinpoint their pain points.

If you continue to present solutions to your customers’ problems, you will gradually build trust and get them to choose your company.

Start with a simple step email

The first step mail has a high opening rate. If you can’t attract the customer’s interest in the first email, they won’t read the subsequent step emails.

In addition to thanking the customer for their actions, it is recommended that the first letter should be simple, describing the content to be delivered and the frequency of delivery.

Enhance the visual effect of step mail

Customers receive tons of emails every day, and they rarely read each one carefully. In order to read the step email to the end, you need to ingenuity the design of the email too.

For example, it is easier to understand an email with graphics and text decorations than an email with text only. So let’s create a step email in HTML and enhance the visual effect.

HubSpot recommends using step emails and marketing automation together.

The reason is that marketing automation enables detailed communication with customers.

For example, let’s say that you have introduced marketing automation to acquire website access history.

At that time, some prospective customers may have navigated the site and browsed the contact page, but they did not reach the inquiry. By using marketing automation, it is possible to send step-by-step emails with content that provokes inquiries to these prospective customers and promote attitude changes.

You can also track the history of emails that have been opened. Therefore, it is possible to send different emails according to the behavior of prospective customers, such as next measures for those who have opened it, measures to encourage those who have not opened it, etc.